Marketing mix modelling

Marketing mix modeling (MMM) is statistical analysis such as multivariate regressions on sales and
marketing time series data to estimate the impact of various marketing tactics (marketing mix) on
sales and then forecast the impact of future sets of tactics. It is often used to optimize advertising
mix and promotional tactics with respect to sales revenue or profit.

The techniques were developed by econometricians and were first applied to consumer packaged
goods, since manufacturers of those goods had access to good data on sales and marketing support.
The first companies dedicated to the commercial development of MMM were MMA (then Media
Marketing Assessment) started in 1990 and the Hudson River Group founded in 1989. Other early
pioneer-users of econometric modeling were the ATG group at the advertising agency JWT in the
1990s and later incorporated into MindShare ATG, BrandScience at Omnicom, and the specialist
modeling agency OHAL since the late 1980s. These agencies took MMM from being a little-used and
academic discipline to being a widespread and common marketing tool. Improved availability of
data, massively greater computing power, and the pressure to measure and optimize marketing
spend has driven the explosion in popularity as a marketing tool. In the recent times MMM has
found acceptance as a trustworthy marketing tool among the major consumer marketing
companies. Often in the digital media context, MMM is referred to as attribution modeling.